One after another, Korea’s medical societies are criticizing the government's plan to increase the number of physicians, saying it will not help solve the crisis caused by the inadequate provision of essential care services.

On Wednesday, the Korean Association of Neuro-Psychiatric Practitioners (KANPP) released a statement, saying that while it agrees with the government's intention to solve the essential care crisis, the answer is not the increase of doctors.

"Essential medical care is indeed in crisis, and we agree that a solution is needed," the association said. "However, increasing the number of medical school students will not fill the gap in essential medical care but will only increase unreimbursed care in urban centers. At a time when health insurance’s finance is at risk of collapse, increasing the number of physicians will only hasten the predictable catastrophe."

The association brushed aside calls for expanding the number of medical school students to increase doctors to OECD levels, maintaining they are meaningless by simply comparing countries without considering differences in their healthcare systems.

"Even the U.K., famous for its National Health Service (NHS), where the state takes responsibility for everything from medical education to training, is experiencing various problems, including restrictions on patient choice of doctors, the collapse of public healthcare, and doctors' strikes. In the U.S., they pay high fees for essential healthcare, but patients’ burdens are heavy,” it said. "No healthcare system is perfect. Comparing simple numbers without considering the context of the healthcare system will only lead to meaningless results.”

It then called for normalizing fees for essential medical services and first solving doctors' treatment in provincial public healthcare institutions.

"An increasing number of doctors are arrested or forced to pay hefty compensation due to accidents caused by medical practices in good faith. The problem of essential care is largely due to a system that fails to recognize the huge risks of low-paying jobs," it said. "If the government regards the trends of doctors abandoning their specialties and flocking to cosmetic and plastic surgery as just a money issue without properly investigating the reasons for this, the solution will remain far away."

The association emphasized that it is urgent to normalize essential care fees, stressing the need to increase the price of emergency and severe cases and reduce the coverage rate for mild cases, like colds, to avoid frequent use of medical institutions for mild diseases.

The state's burden should be increased in regional medical care, including in islands and mountainous areas, and the treatment of doctors working in local public medical institutions should be realized.

"We agree with the government's intention to make essential care gaps a serious topic. However, by not listening to experts who know the solutions, and by politicizing healthcare and education, which are essential to people's lives, it may end up contributing to a healthcare collapse," the psychiatrist group added.